TEXARKANA, ARKANSAS – Teen receives four years in prison for torturing house cat and pet rabbits
A teen who strangled his stepmother’s tabby cat and tortured and killed the family’s two pet rabbits was recently sentenced to four years in prison.
Devan Taylor Diltz, who is 19, appeared with Managing Public Defender Jason Mitchell for a pre-trial hearing at the Miller County Correctional Center. Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Connie Mitchell told Miller County Circuit Judge Kirk Johnson that Diltz’s plea bargain includes two six-month terms in the county jail because he killed Huckleberry and Aurora, two rabbits that went missing from his father’s and stepmother’s Texarkana, Ark., home back on Dec. 8. Also for strangling Socks the cat Dec. 10,
And so, Diltz received a four-year prison sentence. All of the terms will be running at the same time.
Diltz threw the cat out of a moving car as he drove along Jefferson Ave., according to a probable cause affidavit. Diltz then told staff at a Louisiana mental hospital that he enjoys torturing animals. Diltz told a friend that he tortured and suffocated Huckleberry and Aurora before he nailed their bodies to a tree, dismembering them and finally burying them in a Texarkana, Ark., park.
Diltz claimed that he later dug up the dead rabbits, dismembered them more and even burned their carcasses before he buried them a second time. Investigators found a charred cardboard box which contained maggots which had been buried on the grounds of Sugarhill Methodist Church, where Diltz told his friend he’d buried just one of the rabbits. At Ed Worrell Park in Texarkana, Ark., investigators with animal services found a tree with some holes in it that could have been made by nails.
When Diltz showed up for court Tuesday morning in a button down and tie, he was immediately taken into custody. When he stood before Johnson for sentencing, he was already wearing orange.
Last week Johnson signed an order which revoked Diltz’s bond.
Connie Mitchell filed a motion requesting the bond be revocated because Diltz was arrested in Garland, Texas, that time for burglary of a habitation. That charge remains pending against Diltz and a conviction could mean two to twenty years more.
